Google Ads and Facebook ads: which captures demand, which creates it, and how to run both

Google Ads reaches people who are already searching for what you sell. Facebook and Instagram ads reach people who match a profile, whether or not they are looking. That single difference explains everything else: Google captures demand that exists, Meta creates demand that does not. If customers search for your product by name, start with Google. If they do not know the product exists, or the purchase is visual and quick, start with Meta. Running both works well when each platform has its own job and its own metric, and the common mistake is judging Meta on last click conversions, which quietly credits Google for the demand Meta produced.

Both platforms are mature, both work, and the question is almost never which is better in general. It is which one matches how your customers come to want the thing you sell.

Side by side

	Google Ads	Facebook and Instagram ads
Who you reach	People typing a query right now	People matching an interest, behaviour or list
How targeting works	Keywords, match types, location, audience layers	Demographics, interests, custom and similar audiences
Creative that works	Text that matches the query exactly	Video and images that stop a scroll in two seconds
Where the skill sits	Keyword and negative keyword structure, bidding	Creative volume and testing, audience construction
Usual cost shape	Higher cost per click, higher intent	Lower cost per click, broader intent
Measurement	Query to conversion, relatively direct	Needs a test design, because the effect is often indirect
Best for	Capturing existing demand	Creating awareness and demand

When Google is the right first move

• People search for the problem. Emergency plumbing, legal advice, a specific part number, a software category with a name.
• Urgency is built in. Local services and repairs, where the searcher wants somebody today.
• You need to defend your own name. A small permanent budget on brand terms keeps competitors from taking the click when somebody looks for you.
• Known product ecommerce. Shopping campaigns on products customers can name do most of the work, and the feed quality matters more than the creative.
• Business to business with real query volume, where a tightly structured account on a short keyword list beats any broad approach. Google's notes on building a keyword list are the starting point.

When Meta is the right first move

• Nobody searches for it yet. A new category, a new format, a service people did not know they could buy.
• The product is visual. Clothing, food, interiors, fitness, events, anything that sells on how it looks.
• The audience is defined by who they are, not by what they typed: new parents, homeowners in a postcode, people who follow a sport.
• You need volume cheaply to find out which message works, then take the winning message to Google.
• Retargeting. Bringing back people who visited, watched or abandoned a basket, which Meta does cheaply and well. Meta's own advertising documentation covers the objectives and formats.

Running both, with each given a job

1. Write the job down. Meta creates awareness and brings people back. Google captures the searches that result and protects the brand. Put it in one sentence each so nobody argues later.
2. Give each its own metric. Google is judged on cost per conversion. Meta is judged on cost per new customer plus the movement in branded search volume.
3. Watch branded search as the shared scoreboard. When Meta is working, searches for your name rise, and those searches get captured by your Google brand campaigns. That handover is the strongest everyday evidence the two are compounding.
4. Feed both platforms clean conversion data. Server side tracking through Meta's conversions API and properly named events in analytics, following Google's recommended events, improves optimisation on both.
5. Ask every customer how they heard about you, as an open text field. It is the cheapest correction to the attribution problem below, and it catches the advertisement somebody saw three weeks ago.

The attribution trap

Last click reporting gives the conversion to whatever the customer touched most recently, which is usually a search. So the platform that created the interest looks weak and the platform that collected it looks strong, and the natural response is to cut the thing that was working.

The fix is a test rather than a dashboard. Choose a set of regions or a customer segment, switch Meta off there for four to six weeks, keep everything else identical, and compare total enquiries and branded search between the held out group and the rest. That comparison answers the question honestly, and it costs nothing but discipline.

A sixty day start

• Weeks one and two. Fix tracking on both platforms and verify it with a test purchase or enquiry. Write the one sentence job for each platform.
• Weeks three to six. Google on your brand terms plus the five commercial queries closest to a sale, with a full negative keyword list. Meta on one broad audience and three to four creatives, aimed at the clearest single offer you have.
• Weeks seven and eight. Add Meta retargeting. Take the best performing Meta message into your Google ad copy and landing pages, since relevance between query, ad and page affects conversion and Quality Score. Then plan the holdout test.

Mistakes that quietly cost money

• On Google: broad match with no negative keyword list, sending every ad to the homepage, and ignoring the search terms report for weeks.
• On Meta: one creative per campaign, audiences so narrow that frequency burns them out, and switching the offer before any version has been seen enough times to be judged.
• On both: changing budgets daily, which gives the systems nothing stable to learn from, and comparing the two platforms on a single blended cost per conversion that hides which one created the customer.

This page covers the choice between the two platforms and running them together. For how paid search compares with organic search as a long term investment, that is a separate decision with its own guide.

Google Ads and Facebook ads, in practice: the usual questions

Which is cheaper, Google Ads or Facebook ads?

Meta usually has the lower cost per click and Google the higher intent per click. Compare them on cost per customer acquired, counting the whole period a customer takes to decide, and the comparison becomes meaningful.

Can I run both on a small budget?

Yes, with each doing one narrow job. Google on brand terms and your two best commercial queries, Meta on one audience and one offer. Splitting a small budget across many campaigns is what makes it look as though neither works.

Does advertising on Google improve my organic rankings?

No. Paid and organic results are ranked by separate systems, and spend does not move an unpaid position. What paid search does give you is fast evidence about which queries convert, which makes the organic plan much more accurate.

How long before a campaign can be judged?

Give each platform enough conversions to be read rather than a fixed number of days, and in practice two to four weeks of stable settings. Changing budgets and audiences every few days restarts the learning and delays any answer.

Should Facebook campaigns use lead forms or a landing page?

Native forms produce more leads at lower quality, landing pages produce fewer at higher quality. Run both for a month and compare cost per qualified enquiry, which settles it for your market rather than in general.

What should I do first if I only have time for one thing?

Verify conversion tracking on both platforms. Every budget decision afterwards depends on it, and broken tracking is the most common reason an account appears to be failing.

The third place buyers decide

Google captures people who are searching and Facebook finds people who fit a profile. A third group is deciding inside an assistant, where neither platform sells anything.

You cannot bid there, so the lever is the content and listings the assistant reads. A cheap check sits well beside your sixty day start: ask an assistant for the best option in your category on day one and again on day sixty. If paid campaigns lifted branded searches, you may see the name appear. AI Knows Us keeps the log for you across assistants.